Joseph Coughlin - 2019 Management Conference

The key to driving innovation lies in inspiring and motivating your workforce. But how does this apply to today as employers must engage an entire lifespan of workers? Each generation holds their own language, expectations, and life challenges, and addressing these individually is expensive and offers no guarantee of success. Instead, we should consider what these groups have in common. This talk introduces us to the greater “Gen S” – that is, Generation Stressed – whose most in-demand commodity is attention. Employees are constantly juggling an ever-increasing volume, velocity, and complexity of issues that vie for their attention and engagement, and employers must actively compete to both gain and sustain their attention. Drawing upon research in psychology, marketing, and cognitive engineering, this talk will describe the dynamics of Gen S and how employers can attain agenda status for employees across the lifespan.